ical nausea, as he watched it.

"I wish that I could believe you, Mrs. Brenton," he said dryly.
"Unfortunately, it is quite impossible."

Katharine did her best to make her smile more luminous.

"You think so, Mr. Opdyke? So long as you will not believe, you will
not throw off your weakness of the body. You must face disease, not
yield to it. You must lift yourself above it, must plant your feet upon
it in firm disdain, and, using it as a footstool, arise from its ugly
foundations to a perfect and sinless state of health." Again she
paused, and fixed her rapt gaze upon his face which slowly was
reddening and stiffening into something closely akin to a blinding
rage. "Mr. Opdyke, believe me: your poor, broken body is only the outer
guise of your erring mind. Dismiss your error; throw yourself
unresistingly into the vast and placid pool of the Cosmic Ego, and you
will arise from your bed of pain, a cured and healthy man."

A little vein beside Reed's temple swelled slightly and began to throb.
It seemed to him that this impossible woman was tearing his nerves
apart in a remorseless effort to get at the inmost secrets of his
consciousness. By all the laws of self-preservation, he had every right
to drive her from the room. By all the laws of chivalrous courtesy, he
must lie there, prostrate, at her mercy, and listen to her with an
unflinching smile, until the wheels of her enthusiasm should run
down--if, indeed, they ever did.

"I am afraid, Mrs. Brenton," he was beginning as suavely as he was
able.

Katharine, however, interrupted him.

"Mr. Opdyke," she demanded, with a sort of religious sternness; "have
you ever faced disease?"

"I was under the impression that I had," he answered curtly.

"Looked it steadily between the eyes, I mean; sought to impress it with
your mental dominance? Disease is a coward, we are told, a coward who
leaves us, when it knows we feel no fear of it. If you just once would
assert your manliness, not lie there, supine, and--"

"Mr. Hopdyke," Ramsdell's voice said from the threshold; "Doctor
Keltridge is downstairs, and is very anxious to see you about something
most important. What shall I tell 'im?"

Reed, his temples throbbing now in good earnest, smothered a _Thank
God_, and turned to smile at Ramsdell. Ramsdell met the smile with
impenetrable gravity. None the less, a look in the tail of his eye set
Opdyke wondering whether, indeed, the message from the doctor was quite
the acc